As soon as the July heat subsides and August arrives, you can sense the approach of autumn in the gentle breeze that stirs in the evening, causing a slight shiver in bodies still unaccustomed to the midday heat. It is merely a hint of the icy night air descending from Velebit, silently passing through the village without moving so much as a leaf or blade of grass.<\/p>\n
It is time to go inside.<\/p>\n
Grandma has already lit the stove and put the polenta on to cook. It needs a good hour before the thick mixture of flour and water is transformed back into flour. While Grandma, short and stooped, busies herself around the stove, Father prepares potatoes for pole<\/em>\u2014potatoes cut in half\u2014which he will put in the oven.<\/p>\n Mother is putting my brother to bed, and this is the time for Grandpa and me.<\/p>\n Grandpa loved joking around with me, recalling things from his youth. He would tease me and, trying to trick me, say:<\/p>\n \u201cCome on, you say jatale<\/em>, and I’ll say titele<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n I already knew what that meant and suggested that we change the subject.<\/p>\n Seeing that this was not working, he would say: \u201cOh, this finger of mine hurts!\u201d<\/p>\n And he would point to a finger on his hand. \u201cPull it so it will stop hurting!\u201d<\/p>\n Naively, I would agree and pull it, whereupon he would go: \u201cPrrrrrr\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I would jump up angrily, grabbing him by his moustache, and the two of us would wrestle while Grandpa struggled to catch his breath from the laughter bursting out of him. Eventually, we would make peace.<\/p>\n Sitting on his lap, Grandpa once asked me: \u201cDo you know that song about Saint Sava?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n He told me he would teach it to me and began to sing:<\/p>\n \u201cLet us acclaim with love the holy Sava, \u201cThat was sung at school on Saint Sava’s Day, January 27. He is the patron saint of schools and pupils,\u201d Grandpa explained, and continued:<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know what it was like when I went to school? If we didn’t know something, or if we did something foolish, by God, we got a beating from the teacher. Sometimes we even had to kneel in the corner on corn kernels.\u201d<\/p>\n And so our conversation would continue under the flickering light of the kerosene lamp, interrupted by laughter and exclamations, but also by deep silence when Grandpa spoke about hunting wolves with the rifle hanging from its peg on the wall of the room\u2014a rifle that seemed to confirm the truth of everything he told me.<\/p>\n In the morning, after the livestock had been tended to, our conversation would sometimes continue as we waited for breakfast.<\/p>\n We would go outside into the yard, looking for a sunny spot and watching the sun slowly rise above Gradina.<\/p>\n Grandpa would sit down on the \u201chorse,\u201d and the conversation would begin.<\/p>\n I remember one morning when he was particularly inclined to tease me, and he had figured out exactly what embarrassed me.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you have a little girlfriend?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n Then: \u201cDo you ever kiss her?\u201d<\/p>\n Not knowing how to stop the flood of questions, I lunged at Grandpa, but without success. Then I spotted a kala\u010da<\/em> in the corner, half-filled with water left there from the previous evening. I ran to it, grabbed it, and tipped the water over Grandpa.<\/p>\n There were curses and shouting, and I ran away in fear because Grandpa tried to reach me with his stick.<\/p>\n The rest of the household were clutching their stomachs with laughter, but I wasn’t laughing. I hid in the nearby bushes until noon, until the danger from Grandpa had passed.<\/p>\n Grandpa liked to have a little rakija, but Grandma kept him within limits.<\/p>\n There was always rakija in the house. It was distilled at home, and there were plenty of plums in the plum orchard, but Grandpa rarely managed to find the bottles hidden in the secret places where Grandma would stash them.<\/p>\n He was given his ration, and that was that.<\/p>\n But sometimes he did find a bottle, and then he could certainly take a good swig.<\/p>\n Although Grandma was small, she was a force of nature when it came to Grandpa. She was the one who was in command of the household, and she knew how to get angry when she discovered an empty bottle.<\/p>\n Grandpa would swear he knew nothing about it. Surely he hadn’t drunk the rakija. And so on.<\/p>\n But Grandma would not be swayed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s no more,\u201d she would say firmly, leaving Grandpa to fend for himself around the village for a few days.<\/p>\n \u201cGrandma, find me a little rakija!\u201d Grandpa would plead.<\/p>\n Grandma did not like him going around the village looking for rakija, so she would usually give in:<\/p>\n \u201cWait here. I’ll bring you some.\u201d<\/p>\n She would leave him sitting in the house.<\/p>\n But Grandpa was clever too. He would sneak up to the door and carefully peek out after her to see where she was hiding the rakija.<\/p>\n Grandma, bottle in hand, would head toward the trap<\/em>, crawl inside, and pour some out.<\/p>\n \u201cDevilish woman!\u201d Grandpa would grumble angrily. \u201cWhere on earth has she hidden it?\u201d<\/p>\n He knew that through the door of the trap<\/em> he could barely get his head through, let alone the rest of his body.<\/p>\n But I could.<\/p>\n And whenever Grandma went into the village, Grandpa would call me over and say:<\/p>\n \u201cHere, take the bottle and pour Grandpa some rakija down there while Grandma’s away.\u201d<\/p>\n I would usually obey, and that was how we would once again reach a truce.<\/p>\n As for the trap<\/em>, it was a small underground storage chamber dug into the earth in front of the barn, covered with a pitched straw roof. At the front was a tiny door, just large enough for Garov to squeeze through.<\/p>\n I often went inside to collect the eggs the chickens laid there. It was also an opportunity to eat an egg or two, because Grandma was rather stingy.<\/p>\n And so it went on until Grandma noticed that the rakija was somehow disappearing.<\/p>\n I was also careless, and being too weak to tilt the bottle slowly, I sometimes spilled some. Soon the entire trap<\/em> would smell of rakija.<\/p>\n The rakija remained in the trap<\/em>, but Grandma secured the bottle properly, and everything returned to the old routine.<\/p>\n Grandpa begged for rakija, Grandma measured it out and gave it to him, then hid the bottle in all sorts of strange places on the floor where Grandpa, being a large man, could rarely and only with difficulty reach it.<\/p>\n But the eggs were still within easy reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u017deljko Naran\u010di\u0107<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"atribut":[30],"class_list":["post-5272","artikl","type-artikl","status-publish","hentry","atribut-poems"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
The patron of Serbian churches and schools,
There are wreaths, there is glory,
Where our Serbian shepherd Sava is,
Sing to him, Serbs, sing your song and make it threefold!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n